Snapdeal-owned digital wallet FreeCharge has taken a stab at trying to solve with recurring payments with its new feature called Auto Pay which will pay utility bills by deducting from the wallet's balance. Users will have to set a due date for bill and will work for mobile recharges as well. Once the transaction is successful, a confirmation will be shared with the customer. In case there aren’t sufficient funds in the Freecharge wallet, customers are reminded to add money to their wallet. However, loading the wallet through cards or netbanking will still have to have a second factor of authentication. On cards, users will still have to enter the OTP to load money on the wallet. Wallets and payment companies have long been complaining about the Reserve Bank of India's rule on second factor of authentication which hinders recurring payments in India as it compromises user experience. However, in May, the RBI removed the mandatory two-factor authentication for transactions below Rs 2,000 using NFC based credit and debit cards. But this was not extended to card not present transactions (i.e. for online transactions using cards). It is interesting to note that FreeCharge has partnered with Axis Bank which will allow it to load money via the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). The UPI does allow pull-based transactions and will allow FreeCharge to keep standing instructions to pull money from bank accounts. Through the UPI, a user needs to only authenticate the transaction via an m-PIN. However, the UPI is currently live with only…
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